ABSOLUTION
Morgan stood looking down on the man whom he had overcome in the climax
of that desperate hour, wondering if he were dead. He did not stoop to
investigate; from where he stood no sign of life disturbed Craddock's
limp body. Morgan was thinking now that they would say of him in Ascalon
that luck had been with him to the last.
Not prowess, at any rate; he did not claim to that. Perhaps luck was as
good a name as any for it, but it was something that upheld his hand and
stimulated his wit in crises such as he had passed in Ascalon that
eventful fortnight.
A band of men came around the corner past Peden's hall, now only a
vanishing skeleton of beams, bringing with them the two raiders who had
attempted to escape by that avenue to the open prairie. The two were
still mounted, the crowd that surrounded them was silent and ominous.
Morgan waited until they came up, when, with a sign toward Craddock,
which relinquished all interest in and responsibility for him to the
posse comitatus, he turned away to hasten to Fred Stilwell's side.
Tom Conboy had reached the fallen youth--he was little more than a
boy--and was kneeling beside him, lifting his head.
"God! they killed a woman over there--and a man!" Conboy said.
"Is he dead?" Morgan inquired, his voice hoarse and strange.
"He's shot through the lung, he's breathin' through his back," Conboy
replied, shaking his head sadly. "But I've seen men live shot up worse
than Fred is," he added. "It takes a big lot of lead to kill a man
sometimes."
"We must carry him out of this heat," Morgan said.
They carried him across the square to that part of the business front
the fire had not yet leaped over to and taken, and laid him in a little
strip of shade in front of the harness store. Conboy hurried off to see
if he could find the doctor.
Morgan wadded a handkerchief against the wound in Fred's back, whence
the blood bubbled in frothy stream at every weak inspiration, and let
him down gently upon that insufficient pad to wait the doctor, not
having it in his power to do more. He believed the poor fellow would die
with the next breath, and looked about to see if Stilwell were in sight.
Stilwell was nowhere to be seen, his pursuit of Drumm having led him
far. But approaching Morgan were five or six men carrying guns, their
faces clouded with what seemed an unfriendly severity.
"We want to have a word or two with you over in the square," one of them
said.
Morgan recognized all of them as townsmen. He looked at them in
undisguised surprise, completely lost for the meaning of the blunt
request.
"All right," he said.
"The doctor will be here in a minute, he's gone for his case," one of
them volunteered.
Relieved by the word, Morgan thanked him, and returned with them to the
place where a growing crowd of men stood about Seth Craddock and the two
prisoners who had been taken in their attempt to escape. Craddock was
sitting on the ground, head drooping forward, a man's knee at his back.
And Earl Gray, a revolver in his hand, no hat on, his hair flying forty
ways, was talking.
"If he'd 'a' been here tendin' to duty under his oath, in place of
skulkin' out and leavin' the town wide open to anybody that wanted to
set a match to it, this thing wouldn't 'a' happened, I tell you,
gentlemen. Look at it! look at my store, look at the _ho_-tel, look at
everything on that side of the square! Gone to hell, every stick of it!
And that's the man to blame!"
Gray indicated Morgan with a thrust of his gun, waving one hand
dramatically toward the ruin. A sound, more a growl than a groan, ran
through the crowd, which now numbered not fewer than thirty or forty
men.
The sight of the destruction was enough, indeed, to make them growl, or
even groan. Everything on that side of the square was leveled but a few
upstanding beams, the fire was rioting among the fallen rafters, eating
up the floors that had borne the trod of so many adventurous feet. The
hotel was a ruin, Gray's store only a recollection, the little shops
between it and Peden's long, hollow skeleton of a barn already coals.
Men, women, and children were on the roofs of buildings across the
street from Peden's, pouring precious water over the fires which sprang
from falling brands. It seemed that this shower of fire must overwhelm
them very soon, and engulf the rest of the business houses, making a
clean sweep of everything but the courthouse and the bank. The
calaboose, in its isolation, was still safe.
"Where was you last night?" Gray demanded, insolence in his narrow face
as he turned again to Morgan, poking out with his gun as if to vex the
answer from him as one prods a growl from a dog.
"None of your ---- business!" Morgan replied, rising into a rage as
sudden as it was unwise, the unworthiness of the object considered. He
made a quick movement toward Gray as he spoke, which brought upon him
the instant restraint of many hands.
"You don't grab no gun from nobody here!" one said.
"Why wasn't you here attendin' to business when that gang rode in this
morning?" one at Morgan's side demanded. It was the barber; his shop was
gone, his razors were fused among the ashes.
Morgan ignored him, regretting at once the flash of passion that had
betrayed him into their hands. For they were madmen--mad with the
torture of hot winds and straining hopes that withered and fell; mad
with their losses of that day, mad with the glare of sun of many days,
and the stricken earth under their bound and sodden feet; mad with the
very bareness of their inconsequential lives.
Seth Craddock heaved up to his knees, struggled to his feet with quick,
frantic lumbering, like a horse clambering out of the mire. He stood
weaving, his red eyes watching those around him, perhaps reading
something of the crowd's threat in the growl that ran through it,
beginning in the center as it died on the edge, quieting not at all. His
hat was off, dust was in his hair, a great welted wound was black on his
temple, the blood of it caked with dust on his face.
The two prisoners on horseback, one of them wounded so badly his life
did not seem worth a minute's reprieve, were pulled down; all were
bunched with Morgan in the middle of the mob. Gray began again with his
denunciation, Morgan hearing him only as the wind, for his attention was
fixed on the activities of Dell Hutton, working with insidious swiftness
and apparent success among the mob.
Hutton did not look at Morgan as he passed with low word from man to
man, sowing the poison of his vindictive hate against this man who had
compelled him to be honest once against his bent. A moment Hutton paused
in conference with the blacksmith, and that man came forward now,
silenced Gray with a word and pushed him aside.
The blacksmith was a knotty short man of Slavic features, a cropped
mustache under his stubby nose. His shop was burning in the ruin of that
tragic morning; the blame of it was Morgan's. Others whose business
places had been erased in the fire were recognized by Morgan in the
crowd. The proprietor of the Santa Fé café, the cobbler, the Mexican who
sold tamales and chili--none of them of any consequence ordinarily, but
potent of the extreme of evil now, merged as they were into that
unreasoning thing, the mob.
There were murmured suggestions, rejections; talk of the cross-arms on
the telegraph poles, which at once became determined, decisive. Men
pushed through the press with ropes. Seth Craddock looked across at
Morgan, and cursed him. One of the prisoners, the unwounded man, a youth
no older than Fred Stilwell, began to beg and cry.
Morgan had not been alarmed up to the moment of his seeing Hutton
inflaming the crowd against him, for the mob was composed of men whose
faces were for the greater part familiar, mild men in their way, whom
the violence in which they had lived had passed and left untouched. But
they held him with strong hands; they were making ready a noose to throw
over his head and strangle his life out in the shame that belongs to
murderers and thieves.
This had become a matter beyond his calculation; this should not be.
There were guns in men's hands all about him where guns did not belong.
Morgan threw his determination and strength into a fling that cleared
his right arm, and began a battle that marked for life some of them who
clung to him and tried to drag him down.
They were crushing him, they were overwhelming him. Only a sudden jerk
of the head, a dozen determined, silent men hanging to him, saved
Morgan's neck from the flung rope. The man who cast it cursed; was
drawing it back with eager haste to throw again, when Rhetta Thayer
came.
She came pushing through the mad throng about Morgan, he heard her
command to clear the way; she was beside him, the mystery of her swift
passage through the mob made plain. Seth Craddock's guns, given her as a
trophy of that day when Morgan lassoed the meat hunter, were in her
hands, and in her eyes there was a death warrant for any wretch that
stood in her way. She gave the weapons to Morgan, her breathing audible
over the hush that fell in the failing of their cowed hearts.
"Drop your guns!" Morgan commanded.
There was a panic to comply. Steel and nickel, ivory handle, old navy
and new Colt's, flashed in the sun as they were dropped in the little
open space at Morgan's feet.
"Clear out of here!"
Morgan's sharp order was almost unnecessary. Those on the edge of the
crowd were beginning already to sneak off; a little way, looking back
over shoulders, and they began to run. They dispersed like dust on the
wind, leaving behind them their weapons which would identify them for
the revenge this terrible, invincible, miraculously lucky man might come
to their doors and exact.
The thought was terrifying. They did not stop at the margin of the
square to look back to see if he pressed his vengeance at their heels.
Only the shelter of cyclone cellar, sequestered patches of corn, the
willows along the distant river, would give them the respite from the
terror of this outreaching hand necessary to a full, free breath.
The sheriff had released himself from jail, with Judge Thayer and the
valorous Riley Caldwell, and twenty or more others who had been locked
up with them. The sheriff, humiliated, resentful, red with the anger
that choked him--for it was safe now to be as angry as he could lash
himself--came stalking up to where Morgan held Craddock and the
unwounded raider off from the tempting heap of weapons thrown down by
the mob. The sheriff began to abuse Craddock, laying to him all the
villainy of ancestry and life that his well-schooled tongue could shape.
Morgan cut him off with a sharp word.
"Take these men and lock them up!"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Morgan, you bet your life I'll lock 'em up!" the sheriff
agreed.
"Hold them for a charge of arson and murder," Judge Thayer commanded
sternly. "And see that you _do_ hold them!"
Judge Thayer came on to where Morgan stood, the surrendered weapons at
his feet, Rhetta beside him, pride higher than the heavens in her eyes.
"I can't apologize for them, I can't even try," said the judge, with a
humility in his word and manner quite new and strange, indicating the
members of the fast-scattering mob. He made himself as small as he felt
by his way of approaching this man who had pitched his life like a coin
of little value into the gamble of that tragic day.
"Never mind trying--it's only an incident," Morgan told him, full of
another thought.
"I'll see that he locks Craddock and the other two up safe, then I'll
have these guns picked up for evidence. I'm going to lay an information
against every man of them in that mob with the prosecuting attorney!"
"Let them go, Judge Thayer--I'd never appear against them," Morgan said.
Judge Thayer appeared to be dazed by the events of that day, crowded to
their fearful climax of destruction of property and life. He was lacking
in his ready words, older, it seemed, by many years, crushed under the
weight of this terrible calamity that had fallen on his town. He went
away after the sheriff, leaving Morgan and Rhetta, the last actors on
the stage in the drama of Ascalon's downfall, alone.
Beyond them the fire raged in the completion of the havoc that was far
beyond any human labor to stay. The heat of it was scorching even where
they stood; coals, blazing fragments, were blown about their feet on the
turbulent wind. The black-green smoke still rose in great volume,
through which the sun was red. On the flank of the fire those who
labored to confine its spread shouted in the voice of dismay. It was an
hour of desolation; it was the day of doom.
"Thank you for my life," said Morgan. "I've put a new valuation on it
since you've gone to so much trouble to save it."
"Don't speak cynically about it, Mr. Morgan!" she said, hurt by his
tone.
"I'm not cynical," he gravely assured her. "My life wasn't worth much to
me this morning when I left Stilwell's. It has acquired a new value
now."
All this time Morgan had stood holding Seth Craddock's big revolvers in
his hands, as if he distrusted the desolation of the fire-sown square.
Now he sheathed one of them in his holster, and thrust the other under
his belt. His right hand was bleeding, from wounds of the bullet that
had struck his rifle-barrel and sprayed hot lead into his flesh, and
from the blows he had dealt in his fury amongst the mob.
Rhetta put out her hand and took his, bleeding and torn and
battle-maimed as it was, and lifted it tenderly, and nestled it against
her cheek.
"Dear, brave hand!" she said.
"You're not afraid of it now!" he wondered, putting out his free hand as
if he offered it also for the absolution of her touch.
"It was only the madness of the wind," she told him, the sorrow of her
penance in her simple words.